Comment
North Coast news daily:
netdaily.net.au
What services would go after a $65 billion tax cut?
Volume 32 #42
March 28, 2018
Blood in the fishtank With Council in the midst of a trust building exercise with its Community Solutions Panel, the mayor’s blood was in the water at last Thursday’s meeting – he asked for councillor support to ignore process and fast track completion of a major shopping mall project. Mercato is set to become a mega five-star rated ‘green’ mall on Jonson Street, Byron Bay, dwarfing everything else around it. Ignoring the normal channels of bureaucracy is fraught with dangers – as rightly pointed out by no less than National Partyaligned Alan Hunter. ‘Cherry picking’ and giving a developer commercial advantage gives the perception of favouritism, he said. But as with anything political, all decisions have pros and cons, and in this case there is an opportunity for the construction company to finish the job before Christmas rather than mid-next year. Everyone is a winner, said mayor Simon Richardson. He said, ‘Kids get jobs over summer, the cinema opens, retail spaces become available… there is a public benefit in all this.’ But – ah yes. Process. It soon became apparent that the mayor or staff had not prepared anything for other councillors to consider. It was all on the fly. The reason they were considering it was because the mayor, staff and the developers had a private meeting to discuss the project. As it turned out, the developer would be grateful if they were allowed to make Saturday, 7am till 6pm, a work day too. For concrete pouring and the like. ‘It’s a retail area, so no residents will be affected,’ the mayor said. ‘Staff say it’s a win-win as it will be completed earlier. It’s a reasonable request.’ And yes, staff appeared to support the mayor’s views. Ignoring process, if readers recall, was part of why the previous council majority were summarily booted from office. They collectively burnt their social capital to the ground while eroding trust. But imagine how much stuff you could do if it weren’t for those pesky regulations! And explaining yourself to others takes precious time away from getting 'stuff done.' Cr Spooner said, ‘This is a planning matter, so why is it coming via a mayoral minute? It’s murky territory [and possibly an] improper use of mayoral minute. What’s your relationship with the developer? I’m nervous for you and any councillor who supports this – it opens us to potential code of conduct complaints.’ After Cr Cameron also spoke against, a very defensive and petulant mayor said he was ‘offended at the subtle innuendo’ concerning his perceived cozy relationship with the Gold Coast developers. ‘There’s no inappropriate behaviour,’ he said. ‘Going through the normal channels will mean it will open in May next year. [I have] Nothing to gain from this. I’m going to be publicly smashed – but whatever – I’m over it. The haters will hate. We know what will be printed – I am all over it. The perception is out there because it suits a narrative. I’m just doing my job…’ While the mayor admitted there is a financial interest and a benefit to the developers to finish earlier, he repeated he had ‘no problem if it is voted down’. ‘I’m interested in getting good results on behalf of community. If I met developers in a dark alley alone, that would be inappropriate.' When the vote was cast, the developer got their commercial advantage and Byron residents and visitors will apparently also be ‘winners’. Supporting Crs Richardson’s winning mayoral minute were Crs Hunter, Ndiaye, Lyon, Martin and Coorey. Against were Crs Spooner, Hackett and Cameron. Losers! (Dear God, how long will we have to endure Trump?). The NSW Greens played a role in pushing for laws that led to banning developers from improperly influencing elected officials. Even without any inappropriateness in this case, following the propoer process could have been a simple trust-building excerise. Hans Lovejoy, editor News tips are welcome: editor@echo.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
‘The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ – Finley Peter Dunne 1867–1936 © 2018 Echo Publications Pty Ltd – ABN 86 004 000 239 Mullumbimby: Village Way, Stuart St. Ph 02 6684 1777 Fax 02 6684 1719 Printer: Fairfax Media Brisbane Reg. by Aust. Post Pub. No. NBF9237
12 March 28, 2018 The Byron Shire Echo
ury, which has modelled the results of the plan, says that after ten long years, it will return the equivalent of a statistical error – if everything goes to plan and if we’re lucky. But Treasury backs the deal because… well, because it’s economic orthodoxy. The corporate spruikers themselves, of course, are far more bullish: Why, of course they will turn their windfall into productive investment (well, part of it, anyway) and this will – or at least should – lead to wage rises for the masses. This pious hope has
will suffice: Corman is doing a fine job corralling the dissidents and as long as the votes are forthcoming, it doesn’t really matter who gets bought off in the process. This is what might be called the positive side of Turnbull’s strategy; the negative, of course, is the constant inveighing about what our prime minister splutters is Bill Shorten’s unspeakably terrible cash grab – $5.9 billion worth of tax refunds for people who didn’t actually pay tax. But hang on, that’s not a cash grab – this is a cash grab.
No one has seriously proposed an argument about how trickle-down economics… should suddenly succeed in Australia. by Mungo MacCallum become an iron-clad pledge for Turnbull and his urgers; the fact that it has not happened in the past – and certainly not in Trump’s America, where the bosses have spent most of their loot on share buy backs to enrich their shareholders and, more importantly, themselves – is simply ignored. But the charm offensive from the big end of town has more than a tinge of panic about it. The campaign by the banks in the face of the Royal Commission is now telling us that it is not the faceless moguls in the boardrooms who run the show: Australians (presumably both ordinary and hard-working) actually own the banks. Well, some of them, perhaps, collect a pittance in dividends, usually indirectly through their superannuation, but they have absolutely no effective power to influence the decisions by the big institutional players and are shot down in flames if they ever dare to query their authority. Thus for the moment spin
Turnbull’s corporate tax cuts are worth well over ten times Shorten’s relatively modest proposal, a massive re-ordering of national wealth and resources. The big difference is that Shorten will have to be up front about it: there will be losers and they will know exactly who they are. Selling this message will be difficult and will require considerable tweaking before it actually reaches the voters. Turnbull continues to pretend that under his plan there will be no losers – everyone gets a prize. He can work this little white lie because he has not specified just how he will pay for the package; he and his colleagues insist that it is fully funded but they won’t tell us how. Given that they cannot simply print the money out of the government mint – it has to come from someone, somewhere – there will inevitably be losers. They may only lose indirectly: We have no way of knowing how much health, education, welfare, infrastruc-
ture and other social benefits will be sacrificed to the fantasy of jobs and growth, but when we’re talking about a total of $65 billion, some people will have to pay, and suffer for it. This is why Shorten is trying to make the argument that it is all about priorities; it would be nice to be able to afford corporate tax cuts, personal tax cuts, more spending on services, the kind of pie in the sky that was ladled out over the Howard years, when Australia’s unique twist on the tax imputation system was devised to soak up the rivers of gold flowing out of the mining industry. But since we are now facing what was once described as the debt and deficit emergency and which has now got worse, there will have to be choices made. Unfortunately for Shorten, Turnbull is the one in a position to make them immediately and thus gazump Shorten’s spending spree before it can even get underway. Shorten is muttering about winding some of it down – some of the money is not allocated until well after the next election – but to do so would be clumsy and controversial. However, his own big idea has already proved to be both, and he is not walking away from it. And the times, perhaps, will suit him: Turnbull has spent more than two years pushing his enterprise tax plan only to find that the biggest, ugliest enterprises of all – the banks – are now being arraigned and revealed as rorters, frauds and unmitigated greed heads by the Royal Commission he so strenuously resisted. Offering them huge amounts of extra money in the hope that it might enhance the public interest is a brave move indeed. And it will need a lot more than a few pieces of silver to buy off the sceptical voters.
2018 EDITION OUT NOW
Over 40,000 Australians are enjoying better sleep with a SomnoDent appliance
The essential guide to planning a function or event in the Byron region, check our updated website:
Established 1986 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Cornell Production Manager Ziggi Browning
T
he Roman Catholic Church, according to education minister Simon Birmingham, could be bought with a few pieces of silver. So it appears that Matthias Corman, desperate to persuade the crossbenchers that corporate tax cuts, against all the available evidence, will provide a surge in investment and wage growth, has been doling out the lolly and has found at least one sucker prepared to change her vote for a hot scone. Pauline Hanson has caved on her latest pledge with the derisory bribe of a thousand new apprenticeships which, if they materialise, will do little if anything to solve the problem of stagnation. And of course the impending tax cuts (sorry, the national enterprise tax plan – we mustn’t be crude) will do nothing at all for the foreseeable future either. But that’s not really the point. It’s all about securing a badly needed win for Turnbull before the fatal thirtieth NewsPoll, so hot scones (or indeed pieces of silver) are no object. Hanson, absurdly, says she has been convinced by the wonder and beauty of Donald Trump’s tax cuts in America, which shows that as well as the hot scone, she could also be seduced by an offer of the deeds to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Another waverer, Derryn Hinch, is ready to dicker over just how big a bonanza the struggling big four banks should receive. No-one has seriously proposed an argument about how trickle-down economics, which have demonstrably failed in the United Kingdom, Canada and most other countries around the world, should suddenly succeed in Australia. The Commonwealth Treas-
byronvenue.com.au Showcasing many wonderful places and spaces where you can host your next special event. Also featuring professional services that are available to help make organising your event easy and memorable.
Treatment for Snoring and Sleep Apnea Small, Discrete & Comfortable Perfect for Travelling Proven to have Similar Health Outcomes to CPAP 3 year Comprehensive Warranty
Printed copies of the book are available from the Echo office in Mullumbimby or from the Byron Community Centre or email byronvenue@echo.net.au
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au/byron-echo